The present invention relates to food retailers and more particularly to a system for monitoring and evaluating the quality and safety of food inventory and equipment of a food retailer.
Produced food travels from processing plants to retailers, where the food product remains on display case shelves for extended periods of time. For improved food quality and safety, food product should not exceed critical temperature limits while being stored in the grocery store display cases. For uncooked food products, the product temperature should not exceed 41xc2x0 F. Above this critical temperature limit, bacteria grow at a faster rate.
In order to maximize the shelf life and safety of the food product, retailers must carefully monitor the food product stored therein. In general, monitoring of the temperature of the food product enables determination of the bacterial growth rates of the food product. To achieve this, refrigeration systems of retailers typically include temperature sensors within the individual refrigeration units. These temperature sensors feed the temperature information to a refrigeration system controller. Monitoring the food product involves information gathering and analysis. This is a tedious and time-consuming operation that most retailers will neglect. Also, generally speaking, retailers lack the expertise to accurately analyze time and temperature data and relate that data to food product quality and safety.
Therefore, it is desirable in the industry to provide a system for remotely monitoring the food product of a plurality of remote retailers. The system should be able to accurately determine the quality and safety of the food product as a function of the temperature history and length of time stored. Further, the system should provide an alarming routine for signaling when the food product has crossed particular quality and safety limits.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a system for monitoring food product of a remote location. The system includes a communication network, a management center in communication with the remote location through the communication network and a user interface in communication with the communication network. The management center receives food product temperature information from the remote location for providing the user interface with an alarm when an associated limit has been achieved. In a first embodiment, the associated limit is provided as a food safety limit, whereby the food product includes an associated, variable bacteria count that has achieved a potentially harmful level. In a second embodiment, the associated limit is a food quality limit, whereby the food product includes an associated, variable bacteria count that has achieved an undesirable level.
Further, the present invention provides several methods for determining whether the associated limit has been achieved. Initially, this can be determined by a xe2x80x9ctime/temperaturexe2x80x9d method, including the steps of: providing a temperature set point, providing a time set point and determining the limit as a function of the temperature set point and the time set point, whereby the limit is achieved if the food product temperature exceeds the temperature set point for a consecutive time period that is greater than the time set point. Alternatively, a xe2x80x9cdegree/minutexe2x80x9d method including the steps of: determining a set point as a function of a bacterial growth rate of the food product and integrating the food product temperature with respect to time, wherein the limit is achieved if the integration is greater than the set point. Further, a xe2x80x9cbacteria countxe2x80x9d method is provided, including the steps of: providing a bacteria count set point as a function of bacteria type and determining a bacteria count as a function of the food product temperature and time, wherein the limit is achieved if the bacteria count achieves the bacteria count set point.